or heaven's sake,
tell me what I've done?"

"Oh! you've dashed every bit of hope I had to--to earn money--and--and
fame--for Cap'n Daddy and me!"

The young artist laid his sketch tenderly aside to dry. It was too
precious to endanger, even in this disturbed moment. Once it was safe,
he stood his full height of six feet two, put his hands in his jacket
pockets, looked down upon the heaving body of the Spirit of the Dunes,
and said firmly:

"You've got to explain yourself, you know. I don't want to use force,
but really you must look me in the face and try to make me understand."

Janet lowered her hands at once and gazed upward with her eyes full of
distress and apology.

"I do not know what you will think of me! I'm ashamed, indeed I am. But,
well, you cannot understand. I never minded so much when I saw the
things--the others did! Their pictures didn't look like anything
real--anything like our dunes and the Hills, and I thought I could
learn, at least, to do such pictures as theirs, and get money! But
you've shown me--another kind! I can never, never learn to make such
pictures as that!" Her sorrowful gaze fell upon the sketch, drying near
by. "And, you--you seem to be taking something away from us. Something
that is ours, not yours at all! What right have you to take the
Hills--and _me_, without paying well for the privilege?"

During this harangue the man had stood motionless, gazing in growing
astonishment upon the radiant uplifted face which was swept by passion's
clouds, as the June sky was swept by softer ones.

"By Jove!" he muttered at last; and a smile broke upon his handsome,
browned face. "You Quintonites make us pay well for all we get. You
swoop down upon us like a cloud of vultures, or witnesses; but it's
driving the bargain pretty hard, when you set a price upon what we see
in it all, and what heaven meant should be free. As for you--" he
paused, and threw himself full length upon the sand and laughed good
humoredly, "I beg your pardon. I really had no right to put you in the
picture without your permission. I thought, as true as heaven hears me,
that you were like--well, the other girls of the place, and they coax to
have themselves 'taken' as they call it. Now that I hear you speak, I
see that you are different, and I beg your pardon, 'pon my word, I do.
And what's more, the sketch is yours, unless you give me the right to
keep it. I'm afraid I cannot make you understand my position, but the